


Trusted Brand Philosophy

by solipsist



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Canon Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 19:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solipsist/pseuds/solipsist
Summary: Workplace Gothic: not particularly feeling one way or another about the immoral actions taking place after so many years, but feeling a violent sense of duty to do something about it since the law is very real and must be obeyed.Or something like that.





	1. meeting

Miles Upshur lived on a veritable movie set.  
That much was staggeringly clear to Waylon Park the moment Miles slid into the seats across him and opened his mouth to say hello.

Everything else that had happened from that moment onwards completely went over Waylon’s head. All he could focus on was how easy it would be to scare the living wits out of this fucking guy. Everything about Miles was horribly, predictably scripted into a B movie, where good would triumph over evil in a three part act.  
Miles said something, shoved a menu into Waylon’s hands, Waylon imagined what it would be like to tell Miles about a small Pomeranian Jeremy had bought and killed. 

“So I’m going to need you to do my dirty work now and I’ll probably have to cite you in court too. Uh, stuff’s gotten hard - real hard - ever since I found out about the gag order. Oh, thanks so much for coming out here man.”

“Yeah, awesome. Don’t… don’t worry too much about it.”

There was absolutely nothing Waylon saw inside of Miles.  
Miles was dead, yet he kept on speaking and moving wildly, daydreaming aloud about the simplicity of Waylon’s task and how he would have done it all by himself if it were not for the mysterious, impenetrable gag order. Waylon was fairly sure Miles had no idea what a gag order was. 

“Now, uh, I don’t even need any of the actual papers you’re going to send me. You got scanners up there? Of course you do, just send me all the good stuff by fax. Wait, is email okay?”

Waylon darkly waited for the moment Miles would ask is this was an empathy test, ask question after question about a tortoise he supposedly found in an unnamed desert, and the good things about his mother before shooting Waylon in the head and ringing in at Murkoff’s front desk to liberate the patients. 

“No, no, we’ll meet here again and you can just give me a flash drive with all the stuff on it.”

This fucking guy. 

Waylon yearned for a cigarette rather than the beer he had ordered. His fingers crossed over on an imaginary cigarette, pretending he was balancing it between the gap of his fingers. It was too cold and too late to ask to move outside. Miles would had been likely to say no regardless - desperately clinging to the idea of enemies all around him, each ear and eye turned onto the slightest bit of movements and ready to strike. 

“I’ll fax you. They wouldn’t let me back out here so soon,” Waylon lied.

 

He couldn't pretend he didn’t still hope for the best of outcomes.  
Where Miles had gone blind with staunch determination and every issue divided between black and white, Waylon held cautious optimism for the futures of his superiors and inferiors. Was a change of heart more radical to ask for than the total extermination of Murkoff’s name and history?

Miles left early.  
Waylon sat alone in the booth, beer untouched, wondering what would happen if a million toads suddenly fell from the sky perfectly unharmed.


	2. sandwich

“You know, today Richard told me you could catch dyslexia,” Jeremy said with a worried look, placing heavy emphasis on lexia, “Just like catching AIDs.”

The television in the other room softly played.  
A psychic on the local evening show claimed a missing woman was buried in the basement of the local pub. 

Up next was the coverage on reports of a new mutant prowling the streets - a godless hybrid of a rat and a pigeon. Although the entire affair was completely false and the photo flashing on screen resembled a Big Mac more than it did any pest, a deep unknowable dread rocked inside Waylon’s stomach from the thought of someone working tirelessly to perpetuate the hoax.

The television switched channels as Jeremy exited the room. Bombings were reported from far off countries neither Jeremy nor Wayon was sure really existed. Waylon nearly cut his finger off preparing a sandwich. 

“There’s rivers of blood right behind me and you can help most by -”

Waylon shook his hand, blood splattering over the sink.

“- giving blood to any of these locations.”

As if it had its own heart, the finger Waylon tightly pulled a band-aid around pumped heavily. Blood oozed through the cotton.

Jeremy vanished, channels flickering rapidly and offering unhelpful sound bites every fifteen seconds. And despite the terrors of the world and of Murkoff, despite the meeting he held with Miles and how emphatically Miles insisted the only way left was to go forward to the destruction of the ideals Murkoff held, Waylon did not care. There was only a profound sense of emptiness. Waylon felt more inside of him holding his breath above anything else.

Another corpse, a patient seeming more animal than man day by day, stunning technological progress, a hero pushing his way through the world, wars and hoaxes, short and violent romances that never went anywhere, dream diaries with scary drawings - all of which failed to give Waylon a reason to fight back.

Waylon was startled by the suddenness of the epiphany he had in Jeremy’s kitchenette. There was a sensation that it was a crucial moment in his life.  
Waylon could admit he was fully capable of accepting the degeneracy, despite the tightening pain in his chest. The company he had kept now seemed to make decisions about who he was and slowly rearranged the course of his life. And as much as Waylon would had liked to refuse every choice and the direction he was heading in, he had caught up in the rhythm of Jeremy’s insanity and simply, quietly accepted it. 

Upon opening the fridge, a head stared back at him.

The missing girl was not buried in the pub.  
Waylon realized now how much he missed the beer he had abandoned earlier that day and wanted to douse his cigarette. 

Waylon shut the doors. She no longer existed.  
No evidence would be taken. Nothing would be said to Miles or Jeremy nor to the television psychic on the local evening show. 

“Hey. I think I’m going to head out.”  
Jeremy dismissively responded, cutting out thin white lines on the coffee table with a card that had been rejected twice that week.

Waylon wrapped another band-aid around his finger and lamely joked, “I’m going to miss The Unemployed Philosophers Guild meeting. If I miss another meeting, they might revoke my membership.”  
He felt like there was a joke that he was missing. 

“See you.”  
Dark liquid dripped onto the carpet. 

From the fax machine that hummed quietly in the dead of the night in Waylon's crowded office, a door with a small scrap of paper could be seen on the other end of the hallway. A message had been scawled in thin black marker.

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT


End file.
